Making It Last

In a world where houses are hardly affordable, gas prices are on the rise and food costs are close behind, you might feel the urge to not spend money at all. That right there is the strategy I have been going with so far. Though it is far more complex than that, I would like to share the method to my madness in hopes that it helps someone in need.

In most cases, it comes down to not replacing things you need, or at least not having to pay for their replacements. You wouldn’t buy a whole new car just because one of your tires popped would you? An extreme example sure, though you can consider the situation for smaller and smaller objects and come to a similar conclusion. There are however two factors to consider beyond just the cost. One would be the effort it would take to replace the broken part. If the tire was instead the entire engine block, one would imagine buying a whole new car would be worth the price, even if the engine parts were somehow far cheaper than normal.

The next thing to worry about would be the price of the item itself, however this line of thought offers a whole new can of worms to work through. Repeatedly buying a cheap knife instead of a good one that would actually survive being sharpened is an easy way to avoid the effort of maintaining one. On the other hand, once you have felt how easily a good knife can glide through a salmon from head to tail, I guarantee you’ll never want to use a cheap knife again, I know I haven’t.

What this all means is you’ll have to put in effort somewhere, all you can do is choose where you want to put it. Will it be buying cheap knifes that are slower to work with and in need of constant replacement? Will it be a good knife that you need to sharpen yourself but gets through your ingredient of choice like butter? Or the special third option, where you work hard enough at your job to be able to afford not only the good knife, but also afford appointments with someone who can do the sharpening on your behalf? Which of the three is entirely up to you, or perhaps you can find a fourth along the way.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something from my own lesson in life.